10-4 Episode 17: F# Intro

Description

In this episode of 10-4, we take a quick look at F#, a new addition to the family of managed programming languages in Visual Studio 2010. F# is a multi-paradigm programming language. Though its focus is at functional programming, it's capable of producing
object-oriented code like other .NET languages. Since it is a .NET language, it can interop just fine with other existing .NET languages.

There is a lot to F#, more than we could possibly cover in a single 10-4 episode. So in this episode, we are just taking a brief look at the basic data types in F# as well as some more intermediate features like recursion, pattern matching, and partially-applied
functions.

The Discussion

Hello Jason, I noticed on your blog that your are foraying into F# and can see why now.

I've not watched this yet, but am going to try your Dan Ingalls rectangle test in WPF, because logic dictates to me that WPF may be more object oriented than Windows Forms i.e. you should have to undergo less ceremony in WPF but I may be wrong. Not coded it
yet.

in the vieo you say that "the old value of 'a' is still around its just not accesible" but is that really true? surely it will be garbage collected if its not refrenced anywhere else? (in like a closure or something)

Interesting test. I'll be looking forward to seeing what you have to do to achieve it (most of the framework is not wired up in a way (via generics) where you can introduce your own numeric class and have it work just fine).

And yes, as mentioned in the description, F# will be included in VS2010.

Im guessing F# will help MS be accepted into the academic world a little more. At university our first 6months was dedicated to Haskell and trying to shake off any pre-conceptions about programming we had. Functional programming is an interesting world!